We are more than halfway through the Call for Speakers. While the overall application numbers are consistent with our expectations, we need some of your help to meet goals around the speakers’ diversity.
Goals
One of the fundamental principles we had, when we started organizing WordCamp Asia 2023, was to focus on gender and regional diversity. These are based on WordCamp handbook guidelines copied verbatim below:
- Use WordCamp to highlight your local experts; shoot for 80% local and 20% out-of-town speakers.
- WordCamp organizers should strive for a goal of 50% of speakers from underrepresented groups in their community.
Based on our previous WordCamp organizing experience in the region, we expected that the above principles would be hard to adhere to in WordCamp Asia. Therefore, while we do not have a fixed number set in stone, we aim for conservative 60% local (Asian) speakers and 40% non-male speakers.
So this year, we have introduced two additional (optional) fields – gender & country – to collect diversity data from all applicants to track and plot these two metrics in real-time. Below is the current status:
Underrepresented Speakers
As per the data presented in the below chart, we have roughly 22% non-male speakers’ applications, and we are only halfway towards our target. Thus, we need a more gender-diverse speaker roster.
Local Speakers
For “local,” we are splitting countries into those geographically in Asia vs. those outside Asia.
As of now, less than half of the applicants are based in Asia. While it’s hard to aim for an 80/20 breakdown, we need more speaker applicants from Asian countries to ensure we have enough local (Asian) speakers. We think having 60% Asian speakers is an important target to strive for, especially with the knowledge that roughly 60% of the world population lives in Asia.
How Can You Help?
There are many ways to help. Here are some suggestions.
Spread the word
One of the most effective ways to encourage underrepresented speakers is to reach out to them personally. Talk to past WordPress event speakers or professionals with speaking experiences whom you’d like to hear at WordCamp Asia and support their application process.
You can share WordCamp Asia’s “Call for Speakers” (or this blog post) with your local community via meetup groups, WordCamps, other tech events, and online communities such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Slack teams, etc.
Running a globally distributed business
Suppose you are a globally distributed business with some employees based in Asia. In that case, we request you to encourage and support your Asian team members to apply to speak at WordCamp Asia. This can be in addition to the global employees you plan to sponsor.
Financial assistance
We are working with some awesome WordPress people and companies willing to support speaker applicants who will need financial assistance to travel to Thailand (WordCamp Asia 2023 host country). You can increase the financial assistance pool if you represent such a company.
Suppose you are a speaker who needs such financial assistance. In that case, we encourage you to apply as we expect many businesses in our ecosystem to come forward to support you with financial assistance. If you get selected, we will give you time to work with these supporters before proceeding further.
We have already extended “Call for Speakers” deadline by 15 days to give the extra time that you may need to find travel assistance.
Reaching Us
Please feel free to start a discussion using the comment form below if you have any feedback or suggestions to help us meet our diversity goals. If you prefer to communicate via email, please write to asia-speakers@wordcamp.org.